The Future of Asteroids, Asteroids: Outpost

Atari is looking at rebooting, or perhaps reinventing, the Asteroids franchise, Asteroids: Outpost. A new game with a new take on the classic shooter and survival types of gameplay is going to find its way onto Steam Early Access.

They plan to make Asteroids: Outpost into a massively multiplayer first person shooter with aspects of a survival game. That’s right, you heard correctly, this is going to be developed as a survival game where as an industrial tenant of an asteroid, you must find resources and build a suitable defensible platform in order to thrive against other players.

Atari just announced Asteroids: Outpost, a new game being developed by Salty Studios that will attempt to reboot the Asteroids franchise.

Asteroids: Outpost seems like a very interesting take on the survival type of game. Its sci-fi setting being completely unique compared to the majority of this type of game that’s available. You’ll have the ability to mine for the asteroid for valuable resources in which you can use to craft the things you’ll need to survive. You’ll be able to build and upgrade equipment and also supposedly actually build buildings or even an entire complex with which to survive.

Being heralded as an MMO, cooperation with other players and the forming of alliances will likely play a large role in your success. Atari says that you’ll be able to explore, extract, expand and exploit. Hopefully this allows for a more dynamic entry to the survival type of gameplay.

“For the brave, there is a fortune to be made. For the foolish – there is only death. Welcome to the new Gold Rush.”

So then, we return to this universe not as mere prospectors, but as conquerors as well. In a way, this concept sounds very much like Battlezone, specifically like Battlezone II, where one is primarily in control of a vehicle as you go around finding and exploiting resources to enable bigger and better equipment and buildings. It was great if not a little limited due to the technology at the time. The now defunct multiplayer also worked well too.

I can only imagine what a game such as Battlezone II could be like with updated graphics and a true crafting system will be like. Battlezone II was revolutionary for its blend of real-time strategy and first person person shooter elements, so I’m really excited about this announcement for Asteroids: Outpost. It has good potential at least.